Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> From: Dan Cardish [mailto:dcardish@microtec.net] > > But the reverence for environmental portraiture you refer to applies > equally to photojournalism. There seems to be this core > element of the LUG > that thinks photojournalism is next to godliness. And I simply don't > think it deserves it any more than any other form of photography. > Especially the "meatball" stuff Eric was talking about. Perp walks, grip 'n grins, Mexican executions - not sterling examples of the elevating and informing photojournalism Eric was lauding. They are in fact made of the same stuff as the cheesy 2-minute "environmental portraits" he was decrying. As others have noted, good photojournalism takes a (pretty wide-ranging) set of skills. Good portraiture (classical, environmental, candid, whatever) takes a different set. The same for good travel photography. And for good landscape photography. And even the same for good wedding photography - and don't anybody who hasn't done it tell me the photographic aspect of "good" wedding photography is easy. The prosaic and formulaic images by which many identify "wedding photography" speak as little to that craft as the dreck in the average weekly tabloid does to photojournalism. Paul Chefurka